Modern Mental Health: Patterns, Addiction, & Social Media

Today, I sit down with Peter Dalke, host of the Pete Vs. Anxiety podcast, where we explore how destructive patterns form in our lives, why comfort zones can quietly ruin us, and how anxiety, trauma, and addiction often disguise themselves as “normal routines.” We break down how self-justification keeps people trapped in cycles they don’t even recognize until the damage is already done.

Throughout the episode, Mr. Dalke shares powerful insights from his time podcasting in the mental health space, including conversations around suicide prevention, prison mental health reform, schizophrenia, addiction, and the emotional toll of listening to deeply traumatic stories. We discuss the limitations of scripted mental health systems, the importance of lived experience, and why human connection—not algorithms or hotlines alone—is often what people are truly searching for in their darkest moments.

I also contribute perspective from my own military and podcasting background, addressing male suicide rates, toxic cultural narratives around masculinity, the dangers of emotional suppression, and why prioritizing mental health must come before image, productivity, or public approval. This episode is an unfiltered, necessary discussion about the value of human life, the cost of silence, and why being honest about pain is one of the most powerful forms of leadership we have.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/couple-o-nukes/id1657865479?i=1000721664874

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pete-vs-anxiety/id1736293322

https://youtu.be/edv_bNEaYTQ?si=0E3P_lhnws5NuHSz

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and it is the rematch of a century. No, it's not Jake Paul. And no, I haven't been paid off and I'm not even fighting. I am watching a fight, a rematch. I never thought see Pete versus Anxiety part two.

They are back at it again, Pete and Anxiety. And that is just a reference because our guest today, Pete, was on the show once before for quite an extensive episode detailing the hardships of his life. A great episode that you can find in description below, but he is back in Pete, if I'm not mistaken.

You've lived quite a while, but it seems like 2025 was one of your biggest years, a year that just came to a conclusion, a lot of grinding and hustling, pumping out podcast episodes like, like no tomorrow. I mean, how has it all been and, and how have you been since I last spoke with you on the show?

It's been a crazy time, man, but yep. I've been busy, hard for recording things, like that. We are officially all pre-recorded till February March is when the new season will start. So we're ready to roll for season three. And let me tell you, we have a doozy episode coming up for you.

I'm gonna tell you right now, if you think you've heard something, you ain't heard nothing yet, this one will, will blow your minds. Yeah, I believe it. You have some, you have quite the guest catalog as I've seen in so many episodes. And does that mean you're done recording until March or that means you're gonna be recording the next season?

All, I mean, never stop, huh? Oh, we're still going, man. I mean, we're booked all the way out to almost April now, and we're still going, man. Like I said, I, I prerecorded all the way out that far that way in case I need to take some time in between there. I'm ready to roll and all that other kind of stuff, so, for sure all that great stuff.

But, that's the fun part of it though. It just doesn't stop my inboxes. Keep going. You come in, all that fun stuff. Right? Right. And I, I've experienced that before myself when I posted out that Google dating form application for that link on my Facebook. And the inbox was just blowing up, blowing up, blowing up.

Right. Nah, I'm just kidding. But, you've been with so many guests and as a fellow podcaster, I can relate to every day, just learning so much. I mean, what, what has been something cool that you've learned lately from one of your guests? The fact that breaking the pattern of, like how you, you choose certain things, I found that, it, it didn't realize it until you really see it, from the outside looking in, like you notice like how you always gravitate to the same type of people all the time, but you know, breaking the patterns harder than you realize.

And it's just simplistic things that you don't even realize. I'm glad you brought that up because I actually just finished preaching a solo sermon on something similar related. And Jerry Flowers was talking about routines and how a lot of, things that are bad for us or that we fall into, these habits of have been glamorized glamorized in or labeled as routines, right?

It's become a well all to quote him, he said, all my uncles get high. It's just what we do. Or all the men in my family have always, drank or served or whatever it may be, good or bad. So many root things that are routines have become labeled as a generational. Thing rather than just someone's personal choice.

And then in our own life, we often, just make excuses and justify our behavior. I say, everyone's an alcoholic in a sense of that justification, right? Because alcoholics will justify to themselves, well, it's alcoholic, so I gotta drink today. Or it's something bad happened. Mm-hmm. I gotta drink today.

Mm-hmm. There's always an excuse, or even to the point of my father and other guests I've had on the show who are alcoholics have spoken about, oh, it's just so Jewish, it's just vodka. They'll even go down to what type of alcohol it is to justify it. And in the same way we do that with ourselves, whether it's, oh, well, it's just, I, I've gotta go out and do it because the guys are going out and doing it, and I don't wanna be left out.

Sometimes it's societal pressures, which is a huge one for drinking. Smoking is a societal pressure, especially for teenagers and mm-hmm. I think it's what, what have you found? Is something that's useful to help break these patterns, or more importantly, how do we even recognize them? Because as you and I both mentioned, it's sometimes we don't even recognize it because we've just been thrown into it by external factors or by ourself through our own justifications.

It's just like that. Like I said, you just look at, look at the patterns of things that you're doing. Like think of the things like, oh, you're always making excuses for why you're doing something. Well, I'm gonna do this because, and then give it a reason. You're always giving it some kind of excuse on why you're doing the kind of things, and it doesn't make any sense because it's like, you don't realize it 'cause you're just contingent the same thing.

You choose the same people to go to because you're like, oh, well you know, this'll be different. But really it's not. 'cause you pick the same characteristics because you're comfortable with it and that comfortability is what leads you into it. And you don't realize that's what it is that you're dealing with, is that you're, you have the giving into the pattern of the weird things that, you don't realize.

So you were just normal at this point. So everybody else, it's like, eh, why do you keep picking these same type of people? Well, because that's the pattern you're used to. Right? And you're comfortable with that pattern, though. You gotta remember, because that's your comfortability zone. You had to go outside that comfortable zone sometimes to get around that kind of stuff.

And that's the hardest part of it. All those for people is like, you gotta break that pattern being what is his name? Tony. Tony. I can't remember the last name, Tony's nail name was, but he has a book about that where he was writing about like the different patterns that you go into and how to break the patterns, and a lot of times, like you said, it's, we always make excuses for all this kind of stuff because it's like, hey, well it's okay, da da da.

You're like, you try to justify it to yourself because you're like, even though you know it's not supposed to be happening, you're still do it anyways. And you're like, oh no, it's okay. I won't matter. It's just a pattern of, so, it's nothing big. I, you give it some kind of reason that it's okay 'cause you're justifying it to yourself when you really, at the end of the day, know it's bad for you.

Or, it's not right. 'cause it's like, oh, well, this is what the comfortability, okay, it's all right. I'm all right. I could do that. 'cause it, it's all right. And you give it some kind of label to make it feel good to yourself. Right. And it's not only what we do to ourselves or for ourselves, but also what others do to ourselves.

Well, every girlfriend I've had has always yelled at me. That's just how women are. No, you could find a partner who doesn't yell at you. Right. People get into patterns of being the victims of abuse, whether that's emotional, verbal. Yeah. Think about that one. Yeah. Or physical. That's, that's a huge one. And we see a.

People who get married and divorced multiple times. There's typically a pattern there with the type of partners they were choosing or however it is. Yeah. Think about it though. Finances. Think about, just look at the pattern of things that you're doing though. Think about it. 'cause you're like, look at at all your history of everything you've done, and look at how many patterns make sense that you're choosing the same exact thing, the same behavior, same mannerisms, and same things that lead you into the same way.

'cause you're just like, well, this is my normality, this, that's your comfort zone. Like, okay, well your comfort zone keeps leading you into a complete shit zone. So maybe you should probably change it up but you don't realize it 'cause you're just like. Okay, whatever. I'm gonna just, or people like that jump relationship relationship do the same thing kind of too.

It's like they go from one to the other and it's like Barry Berry Barry just never process's just, and they never realize it. And then when people tell 'em something, they're like, oh no, no, you're crazy. That's not right. Look at it dude. Just look at it for five minutes. Look at the same things you continuously do.

Think of like fast food. People are like, oh well it's okay, it's just, it'll be one time. Things like that. But that's how they get you because they hook you on it. Like, oh, you're just making excuses. Oh well I just, I got it. It's like one will be okay, it won't do it, and then you just keep doing it, and things like that too.

And it's, it's so funny. How many different things does that fall into? A weird, weird pattern to everybody else, but to you it's normal 'cause you don't see it that way. 'cause you're looking at it from the same thing. It's, okay, well this is okay, I'm justified this to myself, but other people are like, Hey probably shouldn't be doing that, but you know, we still do it anyways.

And the same thing like cigarettes, you think, like they hook you into those and it's like, okay, well I'll quit tomorrow. I'll quit. No, it's hard. Right. It's hard to watch and you watch people just keep going. It's like, why do you keep paying them? Well, 'cause I need it. You. And then like that need keeps building up and then the withdrawals of it come up and people are just like, they don't wanna go through the withdrawals of having to deal with that, a hundred percent. And I think sometimes it requires a visual. And what I mean by that is just talking and reflecting to yourself. It's hard to see. But imagine if you actually wrote down on paper every time you went to drink what your excuse was, and then a couple days later you pulled out that list and actually read it.

You, it's gonna be a wake up call because we don't. Looking at it from just internally, it's hard to see. And externally, when we have other people look at it, oftentimes we deny it. Right. Mm-hmm. The amount of times I've been in toxic relationship and the homeboys were trying to get me out, you'll make mm-hmm.

You've got the rose tinted glasses on, and so, or the tunnel vision, you see that tunnel vision, not sink else. Of course blinders. Of course blinders. I've been told a lot. Right. And so, unfortunately, sometimes outside intervention won't help, but there's also been plenty of times where someone said something and I was just like, wow, I never thought about it that way.

Mm-hmm. Like that perspective on my situation was super enlightening. And other times I'm like, Ugh, not listening to you, right. And unfortunately, that's why I think if you actually like physically wrote down this list, I mean, I couldn't imagine an alcoholic actually looking at the list of excuses of, of why they needed to drink and Right.

It could be a pattern of trauma, it could just be a pattern of procrastination of. Again, holidays is a huge one. Every day is national Day of something. Right? You could look up what is the national day of today? It's probably hot dogs, pretzels, and onions. I, right. There's just, every day is a holiday if you really wanted, but I think that's a, that's dude, dude.

There's some weird ones like that too. You start looking 'em up, you're like, well, today's, whatever day. And you're like, really? Like, what the hell did that become a thing? It's like, like, all the major holidays and then it's like they just throw in these weird days just to see what you say about, there's like 20 or 50 holidays every day, national days.

And like you said, some of them were like, today's probably National Wombat Day. It's like, what? Who, who decided that I won sense stuff? If I was a wombat, I would've said also, we got Groundhogs Day. Right? But what about us? Right. Groundhog Day, what about, there's a lot of other animals out there, right. So why do they get a day? And yeah, I don't know the whole tradition behind that, but yeah, we'll see. Pete, do you think all on Groundhogs Day, I might, I might study you instead. I might see if you get up and go play outside or if you stay in bed and, and just no, you may do school, you may making that, making that prediction correct there.

Yeah, but it's kind of similar to that. Don't you remember? Because it safe, they see a shadow. It's winter for whatever, X amount of more time and all that kind of stuff like that. So yeah. You can, you can do it. Let's see what happens. You're probably gonna be right, right on, on a bright and sunny Texas day.

Hey Pete, whatcha doing? Versus anxiety came out to play. Right. Make a narc. Pete touched grass officially for the first time. Pete went to touch grass. Everybody It is, it's a new thing. Pete touched grass. Oh man. Yeah. Hopefully you live in a part of Texas where they have that. 'cause some parts of Texas don't have that, so.

Oh, okay. It might have to be Pete went outside and touched a cactus, but we'll leave that one alone. Right. Anyway, Pete, so you talked about, that's one of the coolest things you've learned lately. You talked about no spoilers. You've got a very. Bone Chilling episode coming out soon, which, I've had a fair share of those.

You and I actually share a coworker and friend named Jay Bush. And his story was one of those podcast episodes where I was just like, kind of speechless, just like mm-hmm. Hearing what he went through. And I've even been brought to tears before my show some of the stories about suicide. I mean, three times, man, three times for me, dude.

And it was hard too. 'cause some of them, you're listening to these stories and these people are just like, and it's rough, man. I think Tiff Carson's was the hardest one to listen to you. You're listening to what, what her brother went through. And you're just like, you're feeling the whole thing and she's laying it out for you.

And as you're getting to the clima active point where he's no, he eventually takes his life out, and it's like you're listening to the building steps to it and you're just like, oh man. And it's just tugging away. So, but season three, holy crap, dude. Like this girl, we were having a conversation, you would never even know.

Like, she started going into it and she was listing a lot of things and I was just like, okay. I'm like, this is. All right. There's something she's not saying. So then she gets to the climactic point where she says, the one thing that you probably never I've yet to hear on the show exactly what she just said, the next sequence of events.

And I was just like, what? Hold up, hold up. I'm like, whoa. So we're talking top five. Craziest thing I've ever heard on this show. Like, like the craziest story, just in general. Like the what? Like you trust me, this is one you don't wanna miss. Okay. March. Whatever the heck March starts for that one. Monday, winter Friday we tournament miss for that one.

It's gonna be an interesting episode because this girl, like, she came on and I, I've known her from my, my TikTok family. She was on there because I'm a farms agency's. There. And we were discussing things and she's like, yeah, I wanna be on the show. Yeah, I'm the show. And like, I had no idea.

Just like, I don't for most people, I think the Columbine shooter survivor was the other one that threw me in this loop a little bit too. Because you like, you don't realize how, how much like she was in this thing, like the woman there, I was like, Heidi was there. She could see the whites of this dude's eyes of one of the guys that were involved in the whole incident.

He, he was looking right at him. This girl, yeah, she took the cake, man. She's number two on the list because still number one. So the guy that was talking about, he had suicide aviation the night that morning of the show was talking about, hey, he had the gun in his hand. Yeah. He mentioned that. He just goes casually into it.

Like I'm talking like, I already watched the episode 'cause I was curious when he did it, but he was like, in 15 minutes in, he just starts talking about it and you're just like, oh shit. This one, this one almost took number one. But it was, it was still pretty intense, man. It is always, you never know what these people are gonna come tell you.

He just, they have stories to tell you, but when they go into detail, wow. Wow, a hundred percent. You, and we even get an upfront warning, like, I had a gentleman reach out. He goes, my son committed suicide. I'm a pastor. I wanna come on the show. So I already knew it was gonna be rough, but man, him talking about, his son committing suicide, it was like, wow.

And that, that actually was one of my favorite episode titles, which was A man's son committed suicide. And then God told him this because the conversation he had with God after the suicide was very, it was, I was just like, that episode left me just wild. And, you talked about you got some big seasons coming out here, and I know you and I have talked offline about a lot of different projects.

Anything kind of firmly cemented that we can look forward to in the, in the coming year. I mean, what is the future of, of Pete versus anxiety looking like? And, you and I have even talked about Pete versus anxiety itself as. You know the, the origin story. What is your relationship with the anxiety nowadays too and is that gonna continue to be part of what your, a dare I call it branding and mission is going to be?

Yeah, it's, it's still there. I mean, I still deal with it every day. It's a type of thing. It's just kind of on and off. Depends how bad it is every day. But yeah, it's still going. I've got another side project. I've already started recording called Voice of the Voiceless with our co-host. She and I have already started.

Lemme tell you that one was an interesting one too. Our first episode for that one drops in February on the sixth, and that one was another interesting one too. The girl that was on that one, she was actually on 60 days in and when they portrayed her. She was just completely insane and all these other things.

But she's telling her side of the story of what happened. And it was, it was just like, it's bad though, man. It's like you don't realize how far removed they are in jail about dealing with people in mental health, especially her people with her condition. She, she was part, she's schizophrenic as well.

Mm-hmm. So like, you gotta remember now, like she was put in isolation at one point in this story, and she tells you what it was like going in there for 45 days. And then they came up to her and said, oh, hey, are you done acting crazy? And it's like, but these are the things she deals with This's, the reason she has these certain coping mechanisms to deal with these kind of things.

Because, you know what, she's dealing with this on such a magnified scale. It's not like she's just depressed or these other like, kind of like what would be considered less of the evils. But she's got some pretty crazy like, mixture of things in there, and it was, it was interesting to hear her side of the story because she was like, yeah, when I launched the episode, someone had actually told her they'd seen her on there because she, she had signed this paper for a and e, who's the original one that was recording it?

And she wasn't in the right state of mind 'cause she had no idea she was state of psychosis. So she had no idea. So I was like, that's interesting you, you didn't think about arguing with them about that, how you, your statement shouldn't even used because you're not even in the right state of mental sanity to say yes to these things.

And she was like, no, I didn't think about it. 'cause when she was talking about it, she was making a good point about mental health things and, and she said that that that's not what they cut. The final cut was Final cut was more her making, weird noises in the background. Everybody was weird, but it was her trying to deal with what she was dealing with in her head at the time, and so she goes into great detail about all that kind of stuff and talks about her side of starting. Funny thing was, is she was on season one of the show and we never even knew that's what happened. So I'm not sure where that whole story came in at, but we found out when we were talking to her because I thought it was interesting 'cause I remember her name and I was like, why does that name look so familiar?

So I went back and looked at the catalog and it realized that she was on season one of, she was one of my interviews that I, when I was doing 'em live. I searched Facebook or somebody to fill in the spot. 'cause I was like, oh shit, I got nobody for the spot. Gotta look for 'em. And when we got to that point, I found her and she just popped in and we had a conversation about her.

But never, never revealed any of that. Never said that she was on the show. Never heard, we didn't hear about all that stuff. Now she has her own podcast and things like that too. So she, she, in this interview starts revealing a lot of that stuff, what was going on and how this thing came out. And I was just like, that's crazy.

'cause I've, I've watched this show and I don't think I remember seeing her. So now I'm like, I'm going back through looking to try and see where she was. I think she was season one, she said, but I was like, oh man, I'm trying to watch this thing 'cause I want to see where she's at 'cause I'm curious to see what she was talking about, 'cause she goes into great detail about it. But it was, it's an interesting project coming up though. But, it, it's basically an all audio project though. The idea is to, if you wanna tell your story, you don't have to be heard or seen. Things like that too. You could be seen, but you know, you don't have to be known, because some of those stories are pretty hard for people to tell.

Like sexual assault, things like that Right. Are tough topics to talk about. 'cause people don't want people to know that that's their story because they're so embarrassed about it or they blame themselves for it when it really wasn't their fault that this evil entity decided to do that to them.

And prison mental health reform is not new to this show at all. Mm-hmm. Jay Bush and I have talked about it, Noah, Asher and I have talked about it, the mental health system in the prison and the military system as well need to be deeply reformed. Obviously military mental health is something I talk about a lot.

And yeah. Speaking of schizophrenia, I just wanna share something very. I, I like for lack of better words, very cool and interesting. I had never known before I was sent a video on Instagram about different types of service dogs, and they have a schizophrenia service dog that, anytime a person with schizophrenia sees someone, they'll say, greet.

And a dog will not greet the person unless they're physically there. And so the dog can differentiate between when the person is hallucinating or seeing someone and not, and so the, the, person has to develop trust in the dog. It is really interesting to me because if oftentimes someone with schizophrenia won't believe another person that who they're seeing isn't there, but they'll believe the dog not the person.

Yeah. Isn't that interesting that relationship? And I don't know if it's because. People have, dogs have no malicious intention or evil, right? I mean, they, they do not know of, of good and evil or mm-hmm. And so I think maybe that has to do with it, right? Because you people lie to each other and I think people with schizophrenia already have a distrust of people.

So I found out that they actually make service dogs for people with schizophrenia, which I never knew. So if you or someone you know is suffering from schizophrenia, you might wanna look into those service dogs. 'cause I think that could be a great aid in that, I think schizophrenia that's interesting is one of those things.

There's not a lot of help or research around as much as other things. So definitely something. Well, with schizophrenia, so you gotta remember though, a lot of times you have mistaken and say that all of them hallucinate and they don't, some of them they hallucinate at a different level. Like one guy met a hundred percent.

One guy randomly I met was at work. He mentioned schizophrenia. And I asked somebody, he said that he sees a little orb that shows up and that's really it, and I think it's funny because that's what people start to think automatically is they automatically say, oh, you hallucinate. And they're like, no, it's not always the case for them.

Sometimes it's not that severe. Like they'll hear, some people will hear things, other people Yeah. See things, you know what I mean? And it's like, it's not to the super extent of that. A lot of people think it is automatically when you automatically hear, schizophrenia. 'cause there was a guy that came to the show that does work with people with schizophrenia.

He was like, yeah, I don't who say it at all. I'm like, that was interesting because he said that that was the number one thing people would say to you is when you hear schizophrenia, you're like, oh, well do you hallucinate? That's like everybody's first question to ask 'em. And it's because they wanna know, because the, the statistic really is that they didn't, not a lot.

A lot of 'em don't. And that's, it's about the media coverage. That's what it comes down to. Mm-hmm. Because the worst cases are the one highlighted. So that's the emphasis. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because I had the dyslexia professor on my show Russell Van Brocklin, if I'm not mistaken, you'll have to fact check that name, but he was sharing that, a symptom of dyslexia is letter rearrangement.

When reading literature, it is not dyslexia itself. So many people think dyslexia is just a rearrangement of letters. That is a symptom. Dyslexia is actually a different functioning brain based off where neuro neuroactivity is. And that was a super interesting episode. I, I learned a lot about dyslexia that I never knew, but what we always see is the main or the.

Easiest symptom to, I don't wanna say market, but to show people when to get attention from. And I think it's the same thing with schizophrenia, same thing with Tourettes. Now, Tourettes unfortunately is one of those things that a lot of women have sexualized and faked online for attention. Maybe men do it as well.

I've never come across that, but I'm sure it exists, because it goes both ways. And, Tourette's is one of those things as well, where people yeah, have such a d there's such a scaling to it. And a lot of the women who are sexualizing it because they're only fan models or they work into the pornographic industry or they just want to grow their following they'll do such an extreme version of it.

Like they always do the most extreme version of it. And so I think social media and media, they just always. Go to the extremer side of the scale, the more extreme side because of the attentional draw. And I do think because of that, a lot of the people who have it are often associated with that more extreme side rather than what it may be.

Same with bipolar order. Uh mm-hmm. Just depression. I think most people think that it is a direct, split personality, one in one rather than some of the other symptoms and mental health issues that can come with it. I think it's great to see internet, you say the internet and social media.

'cause like these videos recently it pissed me off. Or the ones that are like the suicide videos where they're like, well after you take your life, and start listing these things. Okay. So I asked somebody that was a psych, a psychologist on the show. I said to him, I said, Hey listen, let me ask you a question.

And I described a video to the t to him, and this is what they're saying in these videos. And he goes. I go, am I wrong for feeling like these videos are very negative in the direction of what you're trying to prove? And he said, yeah, it goes, because if you get to a certain state, he's like, that video doesn't matter to you anymore.

You don't give a living. Don't even care. His exact words that he did. You're just not gonna care. He's like, you're not gonna know. And this comes up in one of the interviews that are coming up. Him and I were talking about Leanne Wils, Leanne, I can't think what his last name now was. Liam and I were talking about it and I asked him directly about it.

'cause I was like, for some reason every time you see these videos, they just piss me off. And he goes, and we were discussing it because he was like, yeah, well where are the videos? Okay, so the video, can you describe them? So the video describes like this, okay. It is like, oh, it's like, there's somebody sitting there and looking at you straight at the camera.

Hey, listen, after you take your life, the, you'll get X amount of text messages, X amount of phone calls, all these things, like all these different reasons that are telling you that, okay, well if you do it, it won't really matter. Life will go on without you. Basically. Essentially, and to what they think you're doing is they're scaring you into thinking that, okay, well this is not okay.

You shouldn't do this for this reason, but you really, most people are like, they're not even listening to that, or you're one of these things are triggering or their slots are coming from. And I fact checked it with them because I was like, Hey, listen, let me ask you about it. And I described it just like that because that's what it is.

Always some big social media figure, something, the massive following is doing it. They're like, Hey, how you doing? Lemme talk to you about something. And they're just like telling you these things. But I'm like, at the same time, you're giving these people reason to believe that, okay, well it won't matter if you're here anymore because life's gonna go on without you forget you.

And he said the same thing. He's like, no. He's like, those are not, those are not productive. I'm like, that's what I'm saying. Like every time you see one of those videos, it just rubs me the wrong way. And I was just like, this is so stupid. Like, you're not helping this situation. You're making this work for clickbait because you're like, whoa.

Right. I wanna jump this man my hand. Well, I think pay attention is to show the impact you'll have when you leave this world, but I think it's coming across the wrong way to point. Oh, it's coming right point a hundred percent. My understanding, I haven't seen the video, so I'm speaking from a limited educational viewpoint, but what I hearing, what I am hearing is I think they're trying to show like, these are all the people who are gonna miss you, all the people who you know you're impacting.

Because a lot of the times, people who are suicidal feel like no one is going to miss them. Right? When I originally started writing my memoir, it was called Who Would Miss Me? Because it was about suicide and mental health. And that's the big question people always have is like, who would miss me? I don't.

I don't matter, right? You have a loss of identity, of purpose, or you're just so overwhelmed and oftentimes feel isolated. And so it's about like, who would miss you? And so I think their idea is saying. Imagine all these text messages would come in, all these emails and stuff about people who care about you, but they don't care about that.

And I always say that because people will say, well, Mr. Whiskey, was there a pattern to the suicides on the ship? You were station, or is it, or is it all the signs? Do you see all the signs? Or there's all these signs, there's, there's a lot of times there isn't any signs. Maybe at some point they tried to talk to you and you just weren't listening to them, or you told 'em, Hey, it's just not the time for this.

Or, Hey, I don't have time to listen, or you don't actively listen to what they're telling you. And a lot of times that's what happens too, is that, they come to you tell you something and it's like they're trying to tell you they need help and you're just not listening to what they're saying to you.

Or you think they're talking just, making like wild statements or they make comments about, oh hey. Mm-hmm. Just, just shoot me where I stand, or whatever. Whatever you wanna put in that context. It's the same thing. And it's just like, there's your sign. You're missing right there.

If somebody's telling you something, they're making hints to you that they need help or they need something, or something's bothering 'em, they're waiting for you to ask them, or they try to talk to you about it and you just don't seem interested at all. So like, well, fuck it. I don't want to talk to you.

Then it don't matter. And then they see that video. And you gotta remember what level, whatever level they're at, you're thinking about these things. That video is gonna push them further to the either side, you're gonna help 'em or you're gonna push 'em even farther to be like, well, fuck it, no one cares.

I'm here anyways, Texas. Well, and where were all these texts when I was alive? Where were all these texts When I exactly needed somewhere. Exactly. And I'll say this too, Pete, I think one of the biggest signs people miss is sometimes people will ask you how you're doing because they want you to answer and then ask it back.

They're trying to ask you to ask them how they're doing. They're trying to reach out without reaching out. Right. They're not gonna say. Hey, I need to talk about this. I'm upset. They're saying, Hey, how are you doing? How's everything been? And you're like, okay. And they're waiting for you to say, yeah, what, what about yourself?

So that you, you are inviting them in to say, actually I've been doing pretty bad. Because a lot of times people feel like if they bring it up first, they are projecting baggage onto you. They are uninvited. But if you reciprocate the question, you've created that invitation for them. Now you should go outta your way to ask people how they're doing so that they don't have to try to set you up for reverse psychology invitation.

You should always be checking on one another. Yeah. Regardless, and actually be you mentioned so importantly, actually take the time and have the time to listen and put stuff aside. I've had suicidal shipmates show up at my barracks room lately at night or early, early in the morning.

And they needed to talk. And that was that. I've had guests on the show who were on phone calls for 14 hours overnight to make sure someone was safe. It's just how it is sometimes. It's, it's funny though. I did an interview recently at, I think what the woman's name was it show called No Prep with someone else.

You and her getting this interesting conversation. She tries to argue the point that 9 8 80 isn't as effective as is. She was trying to say something, some negative rhetoric about it, but somebody in her, her actual. Audience was actually researching and came back with some facts that blew her mind. 'cause she's like, oh well, then she tried to change and backed and, oh no, no, the statistics are all there.

That nine 80 helps. They said that there were more people that, that were on that edge. It helped them more from not doing it, or, and not pulling over that edge because it, there was somebody on the other line that was trained, ready to handle these things and this woman at first was trying to argue, oh no, it's not effective.

Go look at the research and told her person to go research this now. Mind you, okay, so we're live and she's telling this person, Hey, go research it. It was interesting 'cause she was using Chatter to have people comment in and ask questions and things. So one of the people came back and just totally blew her statement out of the water.

And you just see her just like paddling back. Oh no. Oh no, you're right. See, it's real effective. It's like, no, you just said five minutes ago that it wasn't effective, that it didn't matter. Well, I, I have to say, I've had people on my show who actually worked for that hotline. And, or, or similar programs.

And, and here's the thing, yes, it can be effective, but here's why. It's not effective for a majority of people who are looking for another person because what you get is, is really a robot. And what I mean by that is the person who came on my show expressed their frustration with it as someone who worked for them, is that you're not allowed to be personal.

You're not allowed to be like, Hey man, I've been there too. Which is what most people who are suicidal or oppressed are looking for is relatability. Like, you're another human being who understands me, or you're another sailor or military member, soldier, nurse, doctor, whatever it is. Like, you know what I'm going through?

Or just another human being when you call that hotline. And now I've never called them, so I can't tell you that person express what this person was expressing was basically. You have to stick pretty much to the script and you can't get personal. And a lot of them are looking for personal connection.

And I don't know if I've talked about this with you before, Pete. I know I've mentioned it a few times on the show, which is the Pass Off Society that we live on now, right? There's a military acronym that I really liked was act, ask, care, treat. But a lot of us are asking and treating and we're not caring.

And by that I mean we are saying, Hey, here's military one source, here's the nine a a hotline, here's these other resources, here's this sermon. Whatever it is, we are passing the buck to someone else and we are not caring. People don't want to go read emails or web pages or documents or resources. They wanna have a conversation with a human being.

And because of all the resources that are out there, which I'm glad they're out there for those who they do help, it has allowed so many people to just throw a person who is struggling to into those resources and completely bypass that human connection that they're looking for. So I think. There, I understand the issue, l it's all legal red tape, right?

Mm-hmm. If you have unscripted people who say one thing that pushes someone one way or the other, then who's accountable, who can be sued? It's, that's what it's all about. Ultimately, it's why I've been blocked from speaking at suicide prevention conferences because I'm not a licensed, suicide preventer or, or clinician or psychologist, whatever they're looking for.

Even though I've stopped several suicides, probably more suicides than these clinician or doctors who are just reading out of a textbook. I have lived experience and I want to share why podcasting and sharing lived experience is important. But I digress. So I think the NAA hotline, I'm sure it's had a lot of great success but you know, who's tracking the statistics of people who called and took their life, right?

That's they follow up and say, oh, guess they're dead. So my issue with those statistics is. The success rate is based on what is where, who is making those statistics? What's the backing behind it? Are you saying, we say the life of the person agrees not to commit suicide? Is there ever a follow up? I a follow up, do you know?

I believe that's what I believe that's where the research came from. I'm trying to remember how that interview went, because I know the person came back with some factual results and said that they, they'd actually checked back in with people. These are actual responses they got from people, if I remember right.

I believe that's how the conversation went because there was a lot coming at me in this interview because she, like I said, she had a chatter group that was there asking questions about things and I'm just like, alright, this is an interesting conversation. Never had chatter involved in my conversation with other people while recording, you know what I'm saying?

Like normally, you've had usually have ones where the live audience was there. Like, you know how we, before we first met, like I had the whole live audience in it and you can have people ask questions from the audience and things like that too. So it's similar to that except for this ones you had actual people asking you and you were talking to them directly, which is kind of cool.

I thought. 'Cause it was interesting 'cause it was something new I've never done before. It's almost like somebody calling in on a show and just talking to you like their phone in like, like, Loveline used, people used to call in and tell like the wildest stories and shit on that show, dude.

Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? But it was, it was interesting though because like I said though, when the facts came back they were different than what she said. And the backpedaling is what really got me like laughing a little bit inside. 'cause I'm just like, okay, you just said one thing, now you're trying to change the story to another.

And it's like, no, you see, you just made the statement. Now you can't crack paddle and say something else like, like most politicians do. I was just about to say, it sounds like the American political landscape in the celebrity landscape right now. So many people. Are using emotions and opinions as justifications rather than facts.

And when faced with facts, it's people get, but cornered animals are dangerous. That's all I'll say. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, Pete, we've, you and I in alone in this episode, we've talked about suicides, schizophrenia, mental health, prison reform, a lot of different stuff. I was recently on a podcast just the other day, it was actually my first one in the new year as a guest, and the, the host was asking me, Mr.

Whiskey, how do you listen to all these dark subjects? I mean, is there ever any, how, what inspired you to talk about stuff that some people won't ever talk about or touch? And for me, Pete, my answer was, there's never been a second thought. There's never been a doubt. I've never once turned away, I guess, for something that was, oh, that's too much for a couple news.

That's too gory. Mm-hmm. That's too dark or too real. How, how do you feel talking about these dark subjects? Do you have. Do you need to cope or are you detached from it? Or how do you maintain the balance of growing immune to hearing stuff like this, but still having a live human reaction? Ah, man, here we go with the great question again, man.

I tell you what, that's a great one though. Because someone and I were discussing this the other day and we were talking about it and it's like, yeah, it, it's, it's hard when you're an empath 'cause you feel all that energy of those people, what they're telling you. And there's certain subjects that just seem to just like, when you're done, it's just like, okay, well I'm done for the day.

I just need to go take a nap. I need to go recharge my battery. And other subjects, it's like, I, I'm okay with, it doesn't bother me. It's only certain ones. Like narcissistic narcissism seems to be the one that really does it for me. It's like, I get really drained after the conversation and I'm just like, I need to go take a nap.

He isn't one, his ex-wife was a liar. I gotta put that out there. I had two of them that were like that actually. But you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, it was just like, it just because it's so, you relate so much to it, and you're feeling what these people are saying, and sometimes it's just like, it's, it's a state of, how much you feel like to what they're saying.

And sometimes, I gotta go take a nap or something afterwards and just, you feel so mentally drained after listening to this stuff all day. So I'll go do something else to try and take my mind off it. Or I'll listen to some music or something, use something as the way to just kind of like refocus my thought process things, and then those days where I'm doing like three to four, it's like, usually I get through 'em. Okay. But there's sometimes there's that one that just drags you down and you're just like, yeah, I gotta, I gotta reschedule some of these other ones. 'cause I just can't go anymore. I gotta, I gotta take a minute to recharge.

'cause it's just like, if I'm not giving you a hundred percent, I'm not gonna be there. I just don't feel like it's worth, it's not worth their time. But I'll still make it up within a reasonable like day or two or something from there if I have to for things like that. Because it's just like, it's hard man.

Yeah. I hear everything. Like you hear some wild stories, like I said, there's some, there's people Convi Con telling you things that they probably never tell most people, and it, it gets interesting every time you hit record because you know only so much of the story they want to tell you.

And then it's like when they get in there, they get comfortable with you. Oh well I didn't, I didn't think I was gonna tell you this. And it just start sharing things that you didn't even see coming. And I'm just like, oh Jesus, here we go. And you don't know what twi flat twists and turns you're getting into, and to me it's just like, it's hard sometimes, like I said though, but afterwards I gotta, I usually gotta get up, do something else, go, go do something. Depending on what episode it was, sorry. And all that kind of stuff because it's like, it is, it's emotionally draining at times and you're hearing these people stories.

You feel pouring out these stories of what they were dealing with, and, and all the crazy things. I think the most recent one was a friend of mine, Melissa, er, had lost her son to an od Oh man, dude, that was a hard one to listen to. 'cause you're listening to the call and she calls nine one one and says, she got sent to a prompt.

And I was mad by the time that point. I was like, I'm like, you're calling 9 1 1. Why did the hell do you have a prompt for 9 1 1? I'm in an emergency situation. I need to talk to somebody now, and you're sending me to a prompt, and, and you're like, you're, you're hearing her talk about this?

And it's like, me and Melissa are really good friends. We've known each other for a long, I think, God, dude, we've known each other for at least two years now since we started. I started doing this show. She's one of the earlier podcast interviews I did on her show when I, I signed up for it. I didn't even remember even signed up for this episode.

That's a funny story. I didn't remember even signed up for it. But then it got in there with her. Heard that we had, we had a great time though. We got in there and we had a, we had a fantastic time. And then when you found this out, like people were sending me messages like, Hey, did you know this happened?

And I didn't even know what even happened when she posted about it 'cause I was doing something else and I was, I wasn't paying attention to my messages. And then somebody reached out and sent me a Facebook post and showed me what happened. I was like, oh no. So I was like, like, I'm a man of many words.

That conversation was hard to start. 'cause it's like, what do you say to her? Like, I just kept da da da da. I kept deleting the message 'cause I was like, I was trying to think of what to say and I was just like, eventually I just typed, Hey, you know what? Sending up a love for you. If you need anything, you know where I'm at.

And that's what it was like. And that's simple. Boom. That was it. And she was like, I didn't wanna overpour her, her inbox. But at the same time, she states in the episode that she appreciated the overwhelming, responses people were giving to her in her time of loss. Things like that.

Then she was, had the power to go record this episode. I was like, I don't know, man. I don't think I could've done it. I, I would've not. Nine days after the fact it happened. She's just on there talking about it and it was just, it's hard to listen 'cause she's the one that found him. She, this, this poor, gentle, young kid was dead in her house, man.

18 kid overdosed. She went upstairs and found him in the room. Oh hell no. I don't, I don't think I could record after that. I'd have to take some time off of that 'cause I don't even know how to even, how do you even do it? But she, she did it and I was like, man, you're almost, I said, wow. And I was like, I got through it and it was a rough, I had to pause at one point 'cause I was listening to it.

And Jay had come in, I was on live on TikTok, listening to part of the interview and he could hear it in the background. And he was like, he's like, whatcha, are you listening to, oh, I'm listening to this thing right now, Jay. And he's like, oh, nope, I'm out. He took up, he's like, this is too early for this man.

You're, you're a daring soul. So, we got into it and I was listening to it and I got to that part and I just paused it and I just, and it just, I got stuck on that part of the 9 1 1 call. 'cause it was just like, dude, you get a prompt for 9 1 1. It's, it's like, and it just set me off. I was like mad about it for a few days, but I went back and listened to it.

But it was, it was a tough listen man, like, like she, she's wrong than most people are. To go back and talk about her whole life and talk about how she found them and goes in great detail. She starts to find them, and, and it's the same thing with the show. It's like these people, when they tell you those things, man, I'm telling you bro.

Ooh man, some days you gotta, you gotta, you gotta get up. Go do something, take a walk. Yeah. Even taking a walk helps man, get outside, get some fresh air. As my friend Catherine likes to say, go ground, hug a tree is what she likes to tell me all the time. She always texts her feet, go hug a tree.

When I tell her some things, she's like, touch a cactus. Oh yeah, bring it back full circle to the beginning of the episode, wake up. But I, I agree a hundred percent. For me. A couple things. One Tom McDonald, one of his wrap lines that really stuck with me to this day was to McDonald.

Yeah. He said call the police and order a pizza. So who gets to your house first? Yeah. I mean, that line was, I just like, man, like that I, that I've already, but is he wrong though? Think about it. Is he wrong though? A hundred percent. And about I think everything Tom McDonald does is awesome like that though.

I think you have a great point. 'cause Tom McDonald though always says something that pisses somebody off, but it's like, think about what he's saying though. How much wrong? How wrong is he? He's not, he, most of the time he's correct. When he's making, he's not afraid to piss people off, but to prove that he's right, that, Hey, listen, look at what I'm telling you.

Pay attention. Which, that's what I love about him though, is like every time he drive, he brings something out. It's always interesting to hear what this guy's gotta say though, because it's like, how truthful is what he's saying is going on. Well, and when it comes to the police, so many people are like, let's defund the police or just get rid of the police instead of how can we reform and restructure?

Because I, I agree, there's a lot of corruption in the police industry. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of failures on that part. And I think it was actually a young woman in my life who gave me such a great perspective. She said, Mr. Whiskeys, do you really think that police officers should have so many tasks as they do?

They are responding to suicides, but they're not suicide responder trained. They are responding to murders, homicides to car crashes, to fires, to, she said, really, the police department needs to be broken down into even more. Mm-hmm. Niche. Yeah. Of fields. And that was a great perspective. But you see, that was a, a woman who was very politically different than me, who gave a great compromise middle ground instead of, let's just get rid of the police.

All police are evil. It was, hey. How can we restructure it so they're better serving the populace, right? Yeah. Because at the end of the day, both right and left, I mean, that's what we want is the populace to be served as people as politicians. Mm-hmm. I don't know what the hell they want. It's not whatever Mr.

Whiskey wants or Pete wants. But, that being said, I thought about, you were talking about how do you reach out to someone during grief and I recalled a disagreement. I and a woman had gotten into, I was one of her best friends and I believe it was her aunt had passed. And, she was, she had posted about it on social media, but she had additionally posted that she needed space time away from social media and messages.

And she appreciated messages, but she wanted to be alone. But I got in trouble so to speak with her because I had never reached out. And I said, well, I was giving you the time and in space at you're request. And she said, but you're one of my best friends. It's different for you. But for me, I felt like.

For me personally, I felt like, Hey, I'm, I'm no one special whether I'm I'm your best friend or not. If you want space and time it doesn't matter who it's from. Like, you just want your alone time. And so grieving could be so, so difficult because you, it's, it's like I felt like I was doing the right thing by leaving her alone.

Mm-hmm. And then it turns out it, it damaged her and she wanted me to reach out, even if it was something simple. And then other times you reach out simple and they say, Hey, you could have reached out more. And other times you reach out and they say, I don't want to talk to anyone right now. So it's so hard 'cause it's so, everyone grieves so differently.

Mm-hmm. Everyone, there's, I've talked about grieving before on the show. People said there's the stages of grief but they're not linear. They can be cyclical. People can go back to denial. After getting all the way down to almost acceptance, they can go back all of a sudden. Yeah. Something can trigger them.

A song, a memory, so. I think in, in your example, that's what that brought to mind is it can be so hard. How do you reach out and things. It's like you re you're respecting the wishes of what she just said. And then she's like, well, I want you to do something different. It's like, okay, so you just want me to ignore what you just posted publicly to everybody?

Right. You could reach out to me directly and say, Hey listen, you're more than welcome to reach out to me. Or give me some kind of leeway to to know I'm still supposed to reach out to you. Like I don't wanna overwhelm you with anything, so I'm respecting your wishes. And and that was the same out parts I was going through with Melissa was like, I didn't know what, should I reach out to her, me and her know each other really well.

We've known each other for a while now. We're very personal between the two of us, and, and she just, like, she said, thank you. That's all she said. And it was weird because you get in that situation, like you're in, like, you're like, I'm following your instructions now. You're mad at me for following your instructions.

Well, you know what? I, I take accountability. I should have reached out and said, I saw your social media posts. So I am, my, my silence is not absence, it is respect. Yeah. And if you want me to talk to you, I'm here. And, and I've realized that. But you know, like I said, it's individual basis. And, and one thing I'm curious if you struggle with this, Pete, it sounds like not, I'm also very empathetic and, and sympathetic.

Mm-hmm. And I, I, like you and I have both talked about crying on the show and really struggling. But at the same time, it's become so routine to talk about suicide and death that it's, it's almost lost the, the shock factor of it. And I, no, no, the shock factor's still, the shock factor is still there, depending on who you talk to, because I think all of these sites, like TikTok and everything, you can't mention that word.

You, you get in trouble. They say No. Oh no, you got a code mark around me. No, I'm saying for us personally as the host, like I'm expressing how I feel like it's become something so common to talk about. And, and this is something societally too, like. For me, my slow detachment has been just talking about this stuff every day.

But for society, I think we have just lost respect and value for human life. You look at all of the gore and and death we have on social media. That is meme, that is glamorized, that is humorized, and people just don't value or respect funerals. Death, gore as much. People literally go on gore websites as challenges and games as drinking games, as gooning games.

Like it's disgusting to be honest. And people have like turned suicide into such a joke into, I, I had a revelation on my show that really blew my mind where this guy said, joke, the humor around prison rape has normalized it and made it not a crime or a predation. And that like blew my mind when he said, I never even thought of it that way.

I have how our meme culture online shapes how people. React to things. Mm-hmm. Even with the way we talk to women online, how it's affected young men and how they can treat women and how women should be treated. I especially, I mean, Tom McDonald and Dex actually talk a lot about how the way women are portrayed in music videos and how that affects young women, these celebrities, how they represent women.

Mm-hmm. And unfortunately in our celebrity culture, we have a lot of, in fact, one of the coolest things I saw recently was this guy who was talking about every time that a, a society or civilization went to the point of full sexualization and, and freedom in what was allowed, it led to the collapse of that society and looking at the sexualization gateway and how it goes from one thing of beauty and empowerment to pedophilia and bestiality mm-hmm.

Into the full spectrum even and. Episodes on my show about pornographic addiction. Mm-hmm. How it just gets worse and worse and worse just as drugs and alcohol get worse and worse and worse the more you indulge in it. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah. Especially the porn adequin, it's interesting because like you just keep ramping up and it's like, it's not the fact the ramping up, it's the fact that that sensation they're getting watching it, and it gets weirder too.

And it's like, the next step is tranny porn for a lot of guys. And then it's like, none of 'em will ever admit that that's the case and it just gets weird and weird. 'cause they're looking for that, that, that kickback every time it's, they get so immune, so mundane. Mm-hmm. With, with stuff that is just, the funny part was I met a guy, we had talked about the same thing, but he, on the flip side, he had more women than men that were reaching out to him, which I thought was interesting because every time it's always men that have the porn addiction.

It's what you see from a lot of these people you meet, but this guy was like, no, I have more women reaching out to me than men this time around us. That was interesting. It's not who's doing, it's about who we show doing it, right? Mm-hmm. So I've had. Women who were alcoholics on this show and women who were pornographic addicts on this show, and it's so much more so about how many of them are actually willing to share their story and how much do we see?

Because when you think of alcoholic, guess what, I guarantee almost everyone listening to this show just thought of a man a hundred percent, right? When you think of drug addict, most people think of a, a, a man, right? Mm-hmm. And it's so sad that we just like associate with men because what do we see?

How many movies have you watched where a man gets drunk and hits his wife compared to how many movies have you watched where the mom gets drunk and beats the kids? Like mm-hmm. It's just what they show us more of that we didn't lean in that direction, but addiction is not discriminative. I mean mm-hmm.

It will go after everyone. And so I, I really you gotta connect me with that contact. 'cause interviewing women in pornographic addiction is something that is. A strong mission of mine because again, there's not a big highlight on it. I've only met one woman my whole life who has admitted to that and spoken about it, and I'm sure there's, I could find women if I researched heavily, but I'm saying just in my natural day to day.

Yeah. Anya Murie, who was on the show, spoke about it, and that's it. I've only had like a, a few women who actually spoke about alcoholism, and I think. One thing that you and I do as a podcasters on the type of show that we have is that we create a space for those voices to be heard. One could call it a voice for the voiceless.

Shout out to your, to your new show. That's what I'm saying though. See, that's why I did that, that second version to see how many people respond, and a lot of people responded to that. That one's only me out to almost a march already, and we've just started booking a few weeks ago. So there was a lot of overwhelming response to the whole thing of people just, wanting to be on to talk about these things and not be known.

Like you can mention names if you want to, or you can just be a voice of the voiceless. It doesn't matter. You idea is that your story will be heard by somebody out there and somebody will hear it can relate to that. But you know, it's like, it's, it's social media. It's brainwashing people to think these things.

You think about all the advertisements out there are just like, or any of these videos you see, like you said, movies. What are they showing? It's basically like a giant advertisement for 60 minutes to an hour or whatever long. When you say the Lord's a ring, like three hours, you could put all that stuff in there of all these different things that are going on.

But, it's just like, that's just how it is. And it's, it's like, and if you go against the curve, oh, nope, nope, you're wrong. You're wrong. It's funny though, 'cause there's this video I, I commented on, it was a girl, this transgender, and it said, oh, you're not gay. You dated transgender.

What's the lead into the epi? The lead into the video. It's like, okay, cool. So I was like, all right, let me try something. I said, okay. Well, she was beautiful. So I said, she's a very beautiful young lady. Okay, dude. The responses I got from this were just the craziest thing that made me laugh because I got 50 likes so far to date, and 56 responses of people just calling me the gay or saying, oh, these other weird, like, malicious comments.

And I'm just like, I'm commenting back with each one just very lightly humorous. Like, oh, that's, oh, that's awesome. Because it, to me, it's just like you're reading it and it's like all I said is one thing and then you're that moved. You're that triggered by what I just said. It is like, I didn't say anything other than, all she was was beautiful and she was, you would've never known and she never told you.

You had no idea what this woman was transgender at all. And I thought it was so funny that one comment could erupt so many people and just rub people the wrong way. 'cause all I said was one thing. And if you think about it now, if you go against the grain, then you're demonized. 'cause you're doing everything that they don't want you to do.

Oh no, you can't do that. They're all wrong. I just avoid comments and, and for a long time, Pete, I had all my comments disabled on all my social media platforms because you know what more people want to spend their, more people will comment hateful stuff. Not because the content was bad, but because they just, most of the time it was faceless, nameless accounts, just trolling.

Mm-hmm. But even like Jay Bush and I did a relatively it was actually a pretty high performing YouTube short, over, over a couple thousand views and, and a bunch of likes. And then I had one dislike and one hey comment on it. And the content was Jay Bush and I were talking about bridges and how people, oh yeah.

Do you remember that? The hey comment was because we had filmed it in Jacksonville, it was literally a dislike in, Hey, comment, Jacksonville sucks, blah, blah, blah. I was like, see it. People will focus on anything that is part of the message in the background or your character to not listen to it. The amount of people I've had say, make fun of my cowboy hat, and it's like, well, that has nothing to do with the message.

The message about suicide prevention was on point or whatever it was, and Masi Moti, great guy. You've, I love, I think you've interviewed him as well. Yeah. I love mass. I mean, he said, Mr. Whiskey, someone's gonna say, you've got a big hat, or I got big curly hair. And they're gonna completely ignore our message about the sober method and about alcoholism and identity because they want to, argue anything they can.

Like so much stuff that I've had hate comments on, it's always not related at all to what it is. Yeah. Or I remember like. I had one of my lowest performing, or most hated content videos of all time, was a YouTube show about two or three years ago. And it was just about how people will sometimes abuse drugs and alcohol and sleep as negative coping devices.

And here are some alternatives. And the amount of hate I got from people who like to do drugs or alcohol or, or just like sleep away their problems. I mean, it was so much hate and it wasn't like I, I villainized it, I just said people will use these in a very negative manner to cope. So, and, and honestly like there are people who will just, every time I post any YouTube show or Instagram thing that has the word God, faith, Jesus Christ in it instant, like within five minutes of posting, it gets.

Hate comments and dislikes, like instantly, like people, I don't even think people watch it. I think people just see the word God or faith and Jesus and just instantly hate it. And it's like, it's because people to get, if don't agree with it, that doesn't mean you have to just hate it and, and tear down my content.

Just don't even look at it. I don't, I like, there is so much stuff on the internet that I could spend all my time commenting on and, hating on. And it would, it was like, what's the productivity of it? Nothing. I made, I commented on a post for the first time in like, probably two years and it was the other day where people were talking about faith and I just shared a Bible quote and some people commented back and then it got, actually got over, over 500 likes within like 24 hours.

Like people really liked the quote, but there you go. In general, I avoid comment sections because they're so full of hatred, racism go to go to like, well that's why you made the You Matter society. Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying though? You know what I'm saying? Like, if you go to TikTok, and I know people that are gonna hate this.

What I'm gonna say, if you go there and just look at some of these videos, go scroll to the comments section, some of these videos, and you just see the nasty things people are saying to people. Like, remember TikTok is nothing. TikTok is like a child's playground compared to Instagram and X.

Mm-hmm. Those comments, you know what, I'm in YouTube stores. I mean, that's Instagram kind. Oh no. They, they, they can get bad ones. That's just a hellhole. TikTok can get worse too, man. It depends. You gotta find their videos. Like, I, I'm not really gonna say what it was, but there was something Jay had sent me the other day.

I don't know. How much he wants this publicized. But he had, somebody had made a nasty comment, and I'll, I'll tell you about it after we get off here, but it was, it was just a point of like, it, trust me, TikTok has its own gateway too to these kind of things, like these crazy statements that get made by people and, and it's like they choose who they wanna block because it's an ai, it's not an actual person now making these decisions.

I learned this from one of my people about this whole thing. They were talking about it and he was like, yeah, it's an AI bot that comes in these live chat rooms with you in there monitoring what you're doing instead of an actual person making the decision for you. But it's like, it's, it's its own gateway too, man.

There's some nasty comments, but when you say the negative comment thing, I think of, I think of Brooke Reisner because I, I absolutely love this guy. I listened to his podcast, two Bears, one cave, and he mentioned one time he said that, mind you Bert's a comedian now. Okay, these guys make fun of each other.

They say the nasty things to each other 'cause this is how the, the culture is with them. Bert said that the, he, you could get a thousand positive comments. He's only looking at that one negative one. He focuses and hyper focuses on that one thing someone says. Oh yeah. So that's, he doesn't read. That's why he doesn't read comments about that.

'cause it's the same thing. He like, he's like, you see that one thing? And he focuses on it. He's like, you could say a million nice things. He's like, I'm just worried about one person that says the wrong thing to me, that doesn't like something for some reason, even though this guy has no out, it's always for someone below you too.

Here's what I've realized. Mm-hmm. People who are successful in if, if your, if your content is quote amateur or bad, what they'll say is like, Hey, you're doing great work. I remember mm-hmm. When I was at this point in my life, here's some advice. Like people will go out there when I had disabled all comments.

My mindset behind it was, I don't want to provide any platforms for the expansion of sin. That doesn't have to be, because ultimately, like, yes, it hurts the algorithm for my content to not have comments on because comments push to algorithm whether good or bad. But for me, it's like, I don't care about the algorithm.

I care about people seeing these negative comments or false, statements and indulging in that, or being affected by that. Like you said, like I've read some negative comments and it's like, people are like, well, just don't care about it. It's like, it's still just eats away at you. Like it's hard not to, like I, I think about some stuff.

I had some, like Diane Taylor posted. I, I made it short for the other day. I, I think you saw it, Pete, you reached, actually, you commented on it. Mm-hmm. She was talking about young men and emotional expression and vulnerability and so many toxic. Masculine figures left so many hate comments on, that's YouTube and went the full spectrum.

And it's like, it's not like we were pushing for feminization. Like there are comments where all, like the feminization of men is the downfall of society. We weren't pushing for men to paint their nails and wearing dresses and act like women. We said men should have emotional expression and vulnerability at times when appropriate.

But there's such a scale, like I really don't agree with toxic masculinity. 'cause for me, the ultimate masculinity we have is Jesus Christ. And he showed us that there is a time and place to cry and be angry. Jesus wept. Right? And it was when Lazarus died, he knew he was bringing Lazarus back from the dead.

So why did he cry? It wasn't for his own benefit. He, he wasn't sad. He knew he was bringing him back. It was to show us that death is one of those times where we can grieve. Right? And in Jesus Christ, you look at King David, one of the most, a awesome men in the entire Bible, second most named historical figure after Jesus Christ in the Bible.

And he played musical instruments. He wrote poetry, he danced. He did all these things that we have feminized that now men think that if you do them, you're a woman. And so it's, it's all societal constructs. And but man, I just kept thinking about it all day after reading them. And I was like, I know these toxic males are wrong.

And their hate comments that they put on my post we're completely ignoring the message of suicide prevention. I, I just couldn't stop thinking about it. And I tried really hard 'cause I was like, whiskey, you know that they're wrong, that it was stupid. And I didn't argue with them, I just deleted it.

But I was like, part of me was like, man, you should argue with them. And it's like, but it's not worth my time and energy. Like, I've got so much. Content to put out and stuff to make, to help people to have conversations like this is more important than responding and giving in to just these people who pump out negativity or their own opinion because it makes them feel great.

Yeah. And that's, that's the scary part. I did meet a couple young gentlemen the other day, I did want to tell you about they run a podcast called The Life Podcast and it's l.you know, they break it down like that, these two young men and I had an interesting conversation for about an hour.

And let me tell you what they, not everybody's lost in that toxic male culture. Hands out how to shout out to these two guys, man. Fantastic gentlemen. These young men have the right mindset, which gives you hope that there's somebody out there that's gonna start pushing for these things. 'cause we got into that subject and he was the one that brought it up to me.

He was like, you always hear all these males say that, you can't have feelings and things like that. He's like, I don't mind crying. And then things like, we just got in this whole deep conversation and I was like. Wow. They get it, mm-hmm. And it's like, we always want to demonize the, the younger generation say they don't get it, but these guys got it, man.

Like, like these guys right here. What they're doing is having an open, honest conversation between two friends. And then when they invited me to join the conversation with them, they were so excited to talk to me. When we met at first, we started talking about, that's the one thing they brought up.

They're the ones that brought that comment up to me actually. And I was like, right, this is alright. Okay. So somebody's starting to get it, but it, it is the overwhelming amount of that crap that just keeps coming in. It's just like. But we look at where it's gotten us so far, dude, like, we, we look at the suicide rid men, it's like 80%.

Like, and the numbers just staggering me crazy, and it's going up. But most of it is because of silence, because of not mm-hmm. Having emotional connection. 'cause that toxic male culture, right? Like, hey, you can't talk about these things. You shouldn't, there's a time and a place, there is a way to do it.

There's a way to do it that doesn't break down your character or, or shames you or disgraces you. It's all about balance. And so many people, you look at the political landscape, you look at the emotional landscape and the sexual landscape, it's just polarization, right? There is no balance. It's just people are pushing far right or far left.

There's not much middle ground left anymore. There's a, there's a no man's land. And it's like, I think about, I always use the example of like, you take Andrew Tate and David Goggins. Mm-hmm. Both of very masculine men, but one puts down others and one just his only competition is himself. So that's why like, I, it is all about, like David Goggins will put down the traits in other people that are weak traits, that are traits that you're searching for in yourself. But like Andrew Tate now, I don't follow a lot of his content. I consume a lot of content, but I've seen some hateful stuff or some toxically male stuff.

He said some good things as well, of course, I think with every character or person there are good and bad things, things. Mm-hmm. You can take away from it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But you know, like I think about those are two very masculine men, but very different approaches, yeah. And I think you can be a very masculine guy without putting down others.

You can share your story and I think one thing we've shared before on the show is you can share your story as a victim without diminishing others, but still showing your story. Yeah. And overall, Pete, so we've talked about a lot of mental health and social media stuff. What would be your one big takeaway for everyone?

Kind of to wrap it all up. I, I think that we need to stop this, this, this negative rhetoric, like we just discussed. How those comments come in like that, the, we need to stop teaching the younger generation. This is the mindset. 'cause it, we're not getting anywhere. The statistics don't lie.

I mean, you, you argue out day, but how are you gonna argue that number of, that massive number that we have, that this showing up constantly and it's going up the other day. I listen to the radio. They said this, it, it, younger kids and high schoolers. It's getting worse too. It's like, hello, what more do you need?

Let's take for example, quick committing suicide at 10 years old. Mm-hmm. I mean, that, that should be a wake up call for society when you have 10 year olds. Even, even the Dallas Cowboys player. Think about it like he did it and then now what? Look at they're doing, they're not even talking about it anymore.

'cause that was my thing. It was like, like he's 24, he struggled. You knew he struggled. His girlfriend quoted it, was quoted saying that, oh, he had severe problems. Okay, so what were you doing to help him? That's, that's why we need to talk more about these things. Or if you know somebody's struggling, go get 'em some help.

Stop sitting there watching 'em just deteriorate and just go, okay, well no, it'll be fine. Or, like, look, go educate yourself on some of these things too. Like what to do in these crisis situations. Because a lot of times I think that's where we fail at the most point, is that people get into a crisis situation, have no idea what to do, they just start panicking.

And that's the wrong thing to do. As they always teach 'em in any kind of 9 1 1 1 calls, Hey, listen, stay calm and everything else. That's why they tell you, stay calm. 'cause you, you're going crazy. So like, we need to talk more about this stuff. Like, we need to start now and start getting these younger generation and do it too.

Because if we start 'em now, teach 'em these things, now we can finally get the conversation going that, that way we can start identifying with somebody struggling, or things, what they look for. Show them, teach 'em some tips and tricks, because there are people out there wanna see, like the guys from the live podcast, they wanna know what these things, they're curious to know these things.

They wanna get into these conversations with other people, and they want to talk to you about these things, and they're curious and it's, it's people like them are gonna push for that change as well with us. In a younger generation sense that, these younger kids are gonna see that, hey, it's okay to ask these questions because these guys wanna know more.

And that's what we need more. We need more of these guys to open their eyes and shut the hell up and start listening to what's being said. And look at the numbers statistically, look at where we're at, statistic. It's crazy. Like, if we don't start talking now, like eventually we're gonna go up to 82% and then that's more men that are going out this picture.

Even though we make up most of the population, it's like, hello, we're taking ourselves out an alarming rate. Like let's talk about this shit more. And it's just, it's just crazy and it's unnecessary. And my biggest lamentation, mm-hmm is unnecessary death. All the women committing abortion because of financial hardship, even though we have so much money and resources on this world.

I like that. Bribee limitations. All these suicides are unnecessary. Yeah. And here's what I'll say. The prioritization of your personal mental health. I don't know anything about the, the football story, but putting football before your mental health, putting social media before your mental health, putting school, putting anything before it, anything.

Your masculinity, your femininity. Mm-hmm. Your public image, your family image, that is not worth it. Nothing is worth your own life. Like your mental health should come first. Don't just blatantly neglect your responsibilities in life, like arrange everything to take care of what you need to take care of in, in due time, but definitely prioritize your mental health.

The amount of burnout and suicide I've seen as a result. People putting their work first, putting their image first. Yeah. I just talked on a show about a majority of military suicides came from people not wanting to get medical help because they would feel ashamed like they were a quitter or a loser.

They, they, they failed the military and it's like, that's not more important than your mental health, like how your dad looks at you when you come home from the military. If you were medically separated from mental health. Is less important than you not being alive. Like that's mm-hmm. So important.

So I think we have our priorities wrong. Yeah. If you have, we a hundred percent. And this is both socially and personally, and that social impact starts with our personal impact. So how are you treating your mental health and how are the people around you treating their mental health start there and work your way up and through online resources, try to have a global impact online as well.

Yeah. Like Pete and I are having right now with this conversation, we hope it's impacted you. Pete has the Pete versus Anxiety podcast, the Voice for Voiceless podcast, and a whole bunch of other resources coming out this year. For you to look into as well as the U Matter society. I mentioned that briefly earlier on as a school community where you can find resources for all of these topics as well.

Yeah. So Pete, thank you for all the work that you do, knowing that you yourself have mental health struggles and that you have dealt with from anxiety to past trauma and working through all of that, and in all of that to provide all of these resources for us. I really appreciate it, man. Thanks man.

I appreciate it. Those dude, really, really fast. On the point of what you were talking about, you're putting yourself first. There's a gentleman I met he had made a statement saying that he was he blames himself for the condition that his kids are in now because they're in such a bad position.

But he had to put his mental health first. And I was like, well, you, you're no good to them if you're not in the right state of mind, like, what are you gonna do for them? Mm-hmm. You can't blame the other half for what they're doing. For that. You had to worry about taking care of yourself and now you're in a better state of mind to help these guys.

Does it suck? Yeah. It fucking sucks completely. Then you can do about it. But don't blame yourself for something when you were trying to prioritize. Making sure yourself is in a better position to help them. So, and, and it's just, it's just crazy, man. It really is. It's just, Hey, I, I, I always say a suicidal nuclear operator is a dangerous nuclear operator, right?

A mentally stable nuclear operator that took a little longer to qualify is much more valuable. And that's just military lingual for exactly what you said, man. It's like you cannot fully serve the people around you if you don't take care of yourself. And I, I've been guilty of this myself, I have, pushed myself to burnout and to yeah.

Mental health issues and to the point that people said, Mr. Whiskey, even Superman couldn't save everyone. And my response to that at the time was always, I'm Batman. But, the point is, like it is a lot for anyone to try and carry the world on their shoulders and to not take care of themselves.

So I encourage you to do that. I. Pete and I both have a lot of resources on mental health, on suicide prevention, addiction recovery on both of our podcasts and websites. So all those are gonna be in the link in description below, as well as DAXs to be a Man. Mega Remix has a lot of great artists and singers talking about men's mental health in that song, so I highly encourage you to check that out.

But Pete, thank you for the rematch. I think you had, man, gimme the anxiety once again. And if it ever, ever comes, crawling back, shamefully with its head down and its tail tucked between its legs to try to fight you again let me know. Definitely man. For sure. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, man. It was great seeing you again.

As always, man, I enjoyed the conversation.